‘Puppet Regime’: Internal Documents Lay Bare Hamas’s Grip on Major Aid Groups

Fresh doubts are emerging over the integrity of some of the world’s most prominent international aid organizations as a trove of internal Hamas documents offers the first comprehensive look at the terror group’s successful campaign to infiltrate dozens of NGOs in Gaza and leverage them to advance its agenda.The security documents, translated and released Wednesday by an NGO watchdog group, NGO Monitor, provide evidence of Hamas’s strategic exploitation of the humanitarian aid sector and paint a damning picture of NGO complicity with the regime. The cache of Arabic-language files are dated between 2018 and 2022 and originated from Hamas’s Interior Security Mechanism, a unit within the terror group’s Ministry of Interior and National Security. The documents were removed from Gaza and declassified by the Israel Defense Forces.Together, the dossier forms NGO Monitor’s assessment that NGOs in Gaza — including some that receive funding from America, the European Union, and other Western donors — “do not operate independently or neutrally” but rather “are embedded in an institutionalized framework of coercion, intimidation, and surveillance that serves Hamas’s terror objectives.” NGO monitor aptly titled its report “Puppet Regime.” At the center of Hamas’s control apparatus was a “guarantor” system that required NGOs to appoint local Gazans as liaisons between the terror group’s leadership and aid organizations. Hamas demanded that these guarantors hold senior administrative positions as a condition for operating in the Strip. The arrangement also allowed Western NGOs to circumvent direct engagement with the designated terror group while maintaining the coordination Hamas required.According to a December 2022 Hamas document reviewed by NGO Monitor, at least ten guarantors serving as senior NGO officials were Hamas members, supporters, or employed by Hamas-affiliated entities.Such individuals include the administrative director of Medical Aid for Palestinians in Gaza, who Hamas notes “is affiliated with Hamas and has pledged allegiance to its rule”; the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Gaza administrative director, who “supports the Hamas movement” and is “employed by the government of Gaza”; and the guarantor for Catholic Relief Services, identified as “affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” a designated terrorist organization. Both Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Norwegian Refugee Council denied the allegations.Beyond planting operatives in senior positions, Hamas subjected aid organizations to extensive surveillance, NGO Monitor reports. The terror group compiled detailed dossiers on 55 individuals serving as guarantors across 48 NGOs, collecting information on their relationships, religious observance, political affiliations, and personal lives.A December 2022 memo emphasized such individuals “can be exploited for security purposes in order to infiltrate foreign associations, their foreign senior personnel and their movements.”Such efforts reportedly allowed the terror group to directly interfere in humanitarian programming to protect its military operations. A June 2021 intelligence document regarding an irrigation project led by an NGO conglomerate, Oxfam, suggests that Hamas used its relationship with Oxfam’s local implementing partner to ensure that the project was implemented “in a manner consistent with maintaining and concealing tactically advantageous positions for [Hamas’s] forces,” according to NGO Monitor.The report also indicts the NGOs themselves for enabling Hamas’s control. NGO Monitor claims that many organizations “consistently omit or downplay Hamas’ violations, refusing to expose how deeply the terror group has infiltrated, distorted, and exploited the humanitarian space” while remaining “quick to level public condemnations of Israel.”“By choosing to stay quiet and cooperate with the regime, NGOs not only provide cover for Hamas’ abuses, they begin to internalize and adopt Hamas’s own agenda and propaganda,” the report states. “The result is an aid sector that, in many cases, no longer acts independently or impartially.”The watchdog group’s founder and president, Gerald Steinberg, emphasized the report’s implications for post-war reconstruction.“This research is timely and highly consequential,” Mr. Steinberg said in a statement. “Governments and international organizations are planning to provide billions of dollars for the rebuilding of Gaza, and will partner with numerous NGOs to reconstruct infrastructure, provide municipal services like utilities and education, and probably distribute cash payments.”He continued: “We now know which NGOs and their local affiliates have been propping up the Hamas terror regime.”

‘Puppet Regime’: Internal Documents Lay Bare Hamas’s Grip on Major Aid Groups

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